The delivery of controlled substances to patients in a hospital or other medical care environment has long been the subject of attempts at improvement. Initially, the controlled substances were shipped to medical facilities packaged in containers, such as bottles, jars, and the like. These containers were stored at a central pharmacy location. When a doctor required administration of a dose of a controlled substance to a patient, a prescription was written and a nurse was responsible for obtaining the dosage from the pharmacy and administering it to the patient.
More recently, the containers of drug have been remotely located within the medical facility at stations closer to the patients receiving the medication. In this system, the pharmacy releases the containers of medicine to the various nurse substations. The containers of medicine are then stored behind locked cabinets at each nurse substation with the nurses retrieving the drug from the locked cabinet and administering the drugs to the patients.
In an effort to improve these systems, various devices have been designed for dispensing unit dose medication from an apparatus. Advances in the art have resulted in a relatively compact drug dispensing apparatus which provides a high level of security for the drugs being dispensed, is sufficiently flexible to all distribution of drugs of varying dosage formats, and reduces the labor and time drawbacks of the prior art. Because of the small size of such device, however, reloading must take place fairly often. What would be desirable would be a device which would effectuate quick, easy reloading of the dispenser while maintaining a high degree of security. The present invention fulfills these requirements.